What Makes Books Easy For Me To Read? by Jodie, 10

Hello, my name is Jodie and I’m 10. I like reading, but sometimes I find it hard to concentrate on books. Book Walrus asked me to write a note telling authors and publishers about the things that make books more appealing to someone like me:

1) A Clear Layout:

I think some writers/publishers try to save money on printing their books by not using enough pages. DON’T DO THAT. It means the writing is too small and I can’t read it without screwing up my eyes and squinting a lot. Bye bye book.

A good book has big words, lots of space between the lines and a nice font where the letters are easy to tell apart from each other.

My mum sometimes gets me books from Barrington Stoke, which is a publisher that makes books for dyslexic readers. I’m not dyslexic but these books are good because the colour of their pages is a bit different which makes it much easier to read the words on them.

2) Lots of talking

I like to hear what characters say to each other. It makes me feel like I know them better. And it’s easier to read conversations than lots of long descriptions. It even looks nice! If I turn a page and there is lots of dialogue I feel happier about reading it because it won’t make my head ache like some reading does.

3) Shortness

I like books that are short because it takes so long to finish big books that I often forget what happened at the beginning by the time I get to the end.

I like chapters that are short, because then I can read a whole chapter before I put my book down and I can remember where I was when I pick it up again.

I like sentences that are short, so you don’t have to keep re-reading them over and over to work out what the writer means.

I like words that are short, because it interrupts the story when I have to go and find out what words mean.

4) Reminders of what’s going on

I think some writers/publishers think everyone can read their book in a day. NO! NO! NO! I can’t usually do that. So, it helps if there are reminders of who people are, or what they were talking about the last time I saw them, or why they are doing the things they are doing. Then, when I pick the book up again I don’t have to keep flicking back to remember.

This is why I like pictures. Because if I have to look back, I get reminded what is going on from the picture

5) Interesting topics

A lot of short books are for smaller kids so characters are very young and the stories don’t interest me. Older kids like short books too, so they should include things for us. I like scary books with vampires in, but they usually appear in longer books.

My favourite book I have reviewed was ‘Love Bites’ by Jo Cotterill because it has all the things I said above (short, interesting, great pictures, good layout) and it was about vampires. Perfect!

Thank you for reading this. If you are a writer or a publisher, please make more brilliant books! If you are a reader and you have anything you would add, please write it in the box underneath.